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Pittsfield Vt 05762 COATS OF ARMS FROM GERMANY Created and registered for you and your fam- ily by heraldic specialists, handcarved in linden wood and painted by skilled craftsmen Gertnan Heraldic Museum, Overseas Service, P. O. Box DC, Los Gatos, Cal. 95030 hicle in all of South VietnaIn, to accept the Inen and Inateriel frOIn the North." As answers to his objections, the U.S. J oInt Chiefs had only psychological the- ories ahout "punishing" the North Viet- d " d . I . I " ndIneSe an estroYlng t lelr Inora e. In order to believe that they might dc- stro} North VietnaInese Inorale by the bOInbing, the generals had to assun1e the North VietnaInese to be psychologi- cally inferior to the British under the GerInan air raids of the Second \Vorld War-and, indeed, to theInselves. The Inilitary's theory proved false. The North VietnaInese insisted upon being treated as equals-as an enemy. At that point, the AdIninistration, if it was to pursue its objectives, had ver) little choice but to adopt a strategy of attrition. And because of the very na- ture of the war, that strategl Incant the attrition not only of encIny troops and Inilitary supplies but of all Viet- namese, in the South a" well as the North. No one in the AInerican gov- ernment consciousl) planned l po1iC) of genocide-the military c0111mand- ers would have been shocked or an- gered by such a charge-but the fact is that the cOInmanders' polic) had no other Inilitar} logic, and their course of action was indistinguishable froIn it. B) 1969, South VietnaIn had becoIne the most heavily bOInbed country in history. It was also the Inost heavilJ b0111barded by artillery. The AInerican cOInInanders, of course, liked to interpret their whole military policy as nothing more than an iInpersonal exercise of the vast Ameri- can Inilitary Inachine. But, as applied in VietnaIn, the pohc) of "haI aSS111ent and interdiction," the creation of "free- fire zones," the use of artillery to re- place ground patrolling in heavily pop- ulated areas-these and other bOInbing- '-' and artillery practices would have been unthinkable for AInerican cOInInanders to adopt in occupied France or Italy during the Second "'T orld War. [n Europe, the AInericans rejected the USe of cheInical warfare, but in Vietna111 they used napaltn, phosphorus, tear gas, and defoliants of various kinds as a general practice and in such quantities as to render parts of the country unin- habitable. The use of a "body count" as the principal index of progl ess was also unique to the Vletna111 war. Be- sides all these unconventional 111ilitar) tactics, though to some extent the guid- ing force behInd theIn, was the West- moreland-Komer strategy for pacifica- tion: to reInove froIn the countryside all those people who could not be put under Inilitary occupation. The ARVK cOInInanders had no great record of hU111anitalian concern for civi]ians, but even the) would never bv theInselvls have gone to the lengths of removing entire villages to refugee caInps for the sake of eli111inating the N .L.F. fr0111 a certain piece of re ll estdte. And, hu- 111anitdrian concerns aside, the strateg) did not bring the AlTIèricans any closer to winning the war; it Inerely post- poned the losing of it for a tÌIne, and it strained the resources of South Vietnan1 be) ond their liInÎts. (In the I Corps area, it even strdined the AIneIican re- sources beyond their lÌInits. In 1967, the U nited St ltes n1ilitar) cOIn In and k d " ." f was as e to stop generatIng re u- gees, he cause AID hdd neither the food nor the logistical capacit} to feed the people who had already been ren10ved froB1 their land. The tnilitary COIn- 111and agreed, bu t, rather than stop its bOInbing raids or its se lrch-and-destroy operations, it 111erely stopped warning the civilians th lt their villages would be destroyed. The 0111ission of the warnings was a change that the AIner- ican c0111111andels had wanted to Inake for S0111e ti111e, hecause they suspected- with reason-that the eneInv units Were the first to take notice of theIn. ) B) the beginning of 1968, however, it was tune that Inattered Inore than anything else to the AInerican govern- 111ent in its atteInpt to save itself frOIn sOInething that 111ight look like a defeat. v\Yhether or not] ohnson ever had any greater an1bitions, it now becaIne clear that the origina] war aÌIns as eXplained to the A111erican public no longer held. "That had looked like an atteInpt to "save Vietnam froIn C0111InunÎsIn" was, rather, an atteInpt to save AIner- ican "prestige" around the world. But the opportunity for that had already passed. The leaders of other nations had alread) seen what a sInall and de- tennined glOUp of people could do to the United States, and were in the process of dr.:l wing their conclusions. The AInel ican war effort had, then, become almost èntirel) solipsistic: the UnIted States govern111ent was trying " A . . " f A to save Inencan prestIge or Iner- icans alone, to convince itself of AIneri- can supenorIt) . -FRANCES FITzGERALD (T hÙ is the fourth of a series of five articles on TTietnaln.) . BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! [Dan D orflnan in the Wall Street ] ournalJ Buoyed by a rosier glo\v to the econo- my the stock m(;lrket steamed ahead to \vithin l ,vhisker uf its 1971 high yester- day.